KAN Festival: 31 people found someone to ride with, from 1 board

Who it helped

Numbers from our own system, as of 12 October 2026. Every number is people, not clicks, without test accounts or our team.

app.pairmee.com/events/kan

The festival and the problem

KAN Festival is 3 days of music, movement, therapy and awareness at Kfar HaNokdim, in the Judean Desert. People come from all over the country to a remote site, and the festival ends on a Saturday, when no train runs and most buses do not. Anyone without a car has to find someone driving, and anyone driving alone sets off with empty seats.

Until now that happened in a WhatsApp group, where ride offers scroll away within hours and every member sees every phone number.

What the organizers did

They sent us their banner and their ticket link. We built the festival’s page in PairMee, in their own design. They added a button to the ride board on their website, and their FAQ answered “Are there shared rides to the festival?” with a link to the board. That was all the setup on their side.

From the link to a seat in a car

The bars are to scale against the 619 people who opened the link.

1. 619
   opened the link to the board350 came from KAN's website. In festival week alone, 277 people opened it.
2. 156
   opened the list of rides25% of everyone who opened the link.
3. 68
   joined the board27 drivers with 36 rides and 71 free seats, and 45 people looking for a ride.
4. 31
   found a match22 matches: 18 people without a car and 13 drivers.
5. 19
   kept their match until the day of the rideIn 9 cars, all of them coordinated in the PairMee chat.

What the board showed that ticket sales could not

At KAN, 26 of the 45 people who listed themselves as looking wanted to leave from the Tel Aviv area, and only 7 rides left from there. 8 of them found a seat through the board and 18 did not. 35 of the 45 wanted to arrive on Thursday, the opening day, and 31 of all 45 were women.

• Looked, did not find one
• Looked and found one
• Rides that left from the area

1. Tel Aviv area
   26 looked for a ride, 8 found one, 18 did not. 7 rides left from there.

2. All other areas
   19 looked for a ride, 6 found one, 13 did not. 20 rides left from there.

Numbers from the board, as of 12 October 2026. Found counts people who listed themselves as looking and got a seat through the board. 4 more people joined a ride without listing themselves, so 18 people without a car found a driver in all. People who did not find a seat on the board may have come another way.

No ticket system shows this, and people who could not find a way there rarely tell the organizer. Next time it is a decision made weeks ahead: a minibus from Tel Aviv on Thursday, or a direct ask to Tel Aviv drivers to post early. This is what the arrival demand report looks like.

What people said

• 3 ratings, all 5 stars: 2 from drivers and 1 from a rider, including both sides of the ride marked as completed.
• 0 reports about people and 0 blocks across the whole board.
• Support, on Shabbat too. We saw a rider who had been approved for a ride and did not know the next step, and reached out to the driver ourselves. They rode to the festival together.

What we learned, and what we changed

• The free seats were in the wrong places. 71 free seats were posted, but most people looking were in the Tel Aviv area and most rides left from elsewhere. We now show organizers this gap by area, in time.
• Drivers answered slowly at first. We added approve and decline buttons inside the driver’s email, and picking the festival day in 1 tap. Answers came 2.5 times faster, from 47.5 hours to 18.7.
• Drivers decide the outcome. Every board now opens with a message to drivers, before riders hear about it, and full cars get a reason to fill up. How to get drivers on board.

What this means for organizers

• The demand is real. Hundreds of people looked for a way there without anyone pushing them, because the organizer put 1 link where people ask.
• Drivers first. Every match started with a driver who posted a ride and then answered. The first message: “Got a free seat? Post it.”
• Give a full car a reason. Parking at the gate or a faster way in for cars with 3 or more people.
• Plan the way home. At a remote event that ends on a Saturday, the hardest ride is the one back.

Full numbers and definitions

Matches: every request a driver approved, from a rider’s request or a driver’s invite, including ones cancelled later. The 18 people without a car who found a driver include people who asked to join a ride directly, without listing themselves as looking. Of the 45 who listed themselves, 14 found a seat through the board.

Requests: 65 requests to join from 37 people. 28 were cancelled: 11 because the rider had already found another seat, 8 because the driver cancelled the ride, 8 because the driver removed the rider, 1 with no reason. 18 expired without an answer. Drivers sent 24 invites to people looking, and 3 were accepted.

Rides: 27 drivers posted 36 rides. The counter on the event page counts by slightly different rules, so it shows 32.

Visitors: 619 unique visitors, counted by device, from 15 September to 11 October.